Bed, Bath, and Bitterness

I bolted through Best Buy frantically searching for the perfect present. There were 250 kinds of iPods, each with a slightly different feature. They ranged from one so small you couldn't take your eyes off it in fear it might disappear into the abyss to another one 4 feet wide with enough space to fit 80 terabytes of music. All the toys in the section were above $200; Well outside my price range. I made my way to the DVD section. It was a weak idea considering I had gotten DVDs the past two years, and was unaware that good movies had slowly been phased out and a strict Matthew McConaughey only rule had been put into place. All that remained were toasters and giant plasma TVs. I had already exhausted Target. Bed Bath and Beyond was out of the question unless they had changed their corporate policy of dousing me with a bucket of fragrances when I walked through the door. I failed miserably and settled on a card that simply said "Better Luck Next Year." I tried to be a giver, but the universe decided it would be my selfish week.

I am afflicted with gift panic a few times a year. It's the dreaded period of time between optimistically looking through shelves of socks, and buying a Starbucks gift card. I always assume things will work out and the perfect present will hit me eventually. There are about 5 searchable stores, each with 10,000 products. All I need is odds better than 1 in 50,000. Lottery ticket buyers laugh at shoppers for their naivety.

Kids are extremely easy to shop for. Turn to the Disney channel, ignore McDonalds and cereal commercials, and you walk away with a completed Christmas list. Adults are extremely complicated. People don't spend $200 shopping for me, and if I really want something that is relatively inexpensive, I don't wait around for a holiday.

I propose a new "cash only" gift policy. It's a win-win. Kind-hearted individuals are rewarded with measurable recognition, and tight-pocketed individuals receive more money to snuggle with at night.